Abstract
Objectives
Following a specific number of mitotic divisions, primary chondrocytes undergo proliferative senescence, thwarting efforts to expand sufficient populations in vitro suitable to meet the needs of scientific research or medical therapies. Therefore, the human telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) was used to immortalize human chondrocyte and establish a cell line that escape from cellular senescence.
Results
The human chondrocytes were successfully immortalized by ectopic stable expression of TERT. The established TERT-Chondrocyte cell line showed robust proliferation capacity, even in late passages up to P20, and displayed little cellular senescence. Moreover, TERT-Chondrocyte cells at 20th passage showed similar chondrocyte properties to normal chondrocytes at early passages.
Conclusions
Ectopic stable expression of TERT is an effective way to immortalized human chondrocyte. The immortalized chondrocytes displayed little cellular senescence, showed promise as an in vitro model to investigate osteoarthritis, and may be a promising resource for cell-based therapy for damaged cartilage.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81570804, 81872389), the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, and the Key Project of Science.
Funding
This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81570804, 81872389), the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, and the Key Project of Science.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Ethics Committee of the Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University (Approval number: KY20181207-01) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards, and all patients provided written informed consent.
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Yang, J., Tang, Y., Chen, W. et al. Establishment and characterization of an immortalized human chondrocyte cell line. Biotechnol Lett 42, 707–716 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-020-02827-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-020-02827-y